Beyond the Frames

This beautifully written, impressively researched and lavishly illustrated book by Michael Wood (The Story of India, BBC Books, 20 pounds) is a companion to his recent TV series on the same subject. It would be easy to dismiss his book as ephemeral because of its TV association. This would be a mistake, as over the years Wood has forged a reputation for accuracy, intellectual honesty and curiosity, and a passion for the subject at hand, palpable even on the printed page. If there is a successor to J. Bronowski, it is Wood.

Wood undertook this project not simply as yet another retelling of Indian history. He approaches India from two not necessarily opposite standpoints. He quotes Marco Polo’s description of India as a land of wonders, and avers that it is still true. And then, crucially — in a distinction that will make traditionalist historians smirk and modernist historians froth at the mouth — he notes that “India is also the world’s most ancient surviving civilisation, with unbroken continuity stretching back into prehistory”. To this he adds that at a time when the globalisation process is slowly eroding cultural differences the world over, “it seems to me that nowhere on Earth can you find all human histories, from the Stone Age to the global village, still thriving, as you can in India. And that is the big story told in this book”.

And if you think that is nostalgia gone berserk, then you are dead wrong. Because Wood does not so much seek to explain as to understand. And what is that he seeks to understand? The paradox that is India today, seen through the prism of its history — how did it handle the multicultural society that it is today, without completely flying off the map? To find out, Wood goes back into the past, and traces how India became what it was, and is. The result is riveting, and at the same time, discomfiting. Riveting, because he takes history from the hands of the professional bores, and show us why India was such a wonder; discomfiting, because he holds before us, without judgment, a mirror that shows the degeneration that has taken place. Sometimes, it is riveting and discomfiting simultaneously, when he shows how cutting-edge technology coexists with abject poverty.